


time and time again

by a_secondhand_sorrow



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Post-Canon, for the DEH Winter Gift Exchange!, former relationship, low-key holiday celebration, vague references to suicide and suicidal ideation but nothing explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:26:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22087117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_secondhand_sorrow/pseuds/a_secondhand_sorrow
Summary: It turns out to be this: her first night back home, Zoe Murphy slips out the back door and just sits on the porch, watching the stars. And Evan? Well, Evan never left.Maybe if they could just be in the same town, in the same park, in the same lifetime again. Maybe they'd forget. Maybe they'd start again.It's a nice thought. But though time heals wounds, it doesn't forget them easily. The only option is to move forward and to remember and to thank every being you can imagine for getting to this point.(or: a year later, Zoe and Evan learn to move on and away)
Relationships: Evan Hansen & Heidi Hansen, Evan Hansen/Zoe Murphy, other relationships but they're not as prevalent
Comments: 6
Kudos: 27





	time and time again

**Author's Note:**

> This is my gift for DEH Winter Gift Exchange (@sincerely-us) on Tumblr for @thatfriendlyanon! I'm posting a little early but I'm excited :))
> 
> Just for ease of timing/pop culture references it’s set in 2019/2020.

Her first night back home, Zoe slips out the back door and just sits on the porch. It’s cold outside, like it always is in December, and it seeps through the old dollar store flip-flops she’d shoved her feet into on the way out the door. She shivers as a chilly gust of air bites through her purple and white sweatpants and old, graduating-class t-shirt. She’s like a collage of new and old school spirit, and some part of her hates it while the rest of her loves it. Sinking into one of the wicker chairs, she takes a breath for what feels like the first time since she stepped off the train in town, letting the hum of the cicadas drown out her other thoughts. She’s almost forgotten the different noise in the suburbs, the noises she was so used to in her first eighteen years of life. It feels disarming to be back in those noises after so long away. 

Finally, once she’s sat in the feeling of the cold outdoors, her eyes drift up towards the sky. A smile picks at her lips, drawn by the faint points of light in the sky. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she registers names of a few, although had she tried to remember them consciously, she’s sure she wouldn’t be able to say them. 

(Maybe it’s two memories, ripe with different kinds of nostalgia, that stop her from truly remembering. Maybe it’s the memory of two different hands in hers under the night sky. The memory of childhood, of wild giggles spilling from her lips, of another protective little hand in hers and speaking in what they thought were whispers but were more like normal volumes, sharing those names with her for the first time. And later, a later memory, of grass underneath her and a once-still hand in hers and warm lips pressed just right of her ear whispering the names he knew and asking her the ones he didn’t.)

She...likes school. She really does. It‘s felt like a fresh start in so many ways, with new people and new scenery and an easier way to breathe. Fewer shadows to haunt her from the corners of her eyes, drowned out by the constant lights of the city. 

She just wishes she could see the stars there, that’s all. 

Not that the stars at home are bright, exactly. They’re still dulled and hard to see, but they’re a world away from how they look at school. They are visible even if they’re not the strongest. 

So Zoe smiles and looks at them, ignoring the lights that spill out from inside the house and the two figures they reveal inside. 

After some time, she stands quietly, moving through the air as though it is nothing more than smoke and revelling in how silent she can be just before opening the door to the indoors. 

“Everything alright?

Zoe’s head snaps up, locking onto where Larry is seated just beyond the kitchen and into the living room. She shakes her head at her own jumpiness, freeing her feet from the flip-flops. “Yeah, just catching some fresh air.”

Already, that almost-suffocating feeling is back. She can breath, but the air doesn’t seem to quite reach her lungs. 

“Yeah, I just wanted some fresh air.” Her eyes scan the rooms. “Where’s mom?”

Larry’s lip quirks at the corner, but it doesn’t really seem happy. “She wanted to stay up to talk with you, but she was pretty tired so she turned in early.”

“Oh,” Zoe says, and for some reason it makes her feel kind of small. She crosses the house, letting her feet acclimate to the warmer temperature through her socks. She studies her father; he has dark circles of his own, and his hand seems to shake slightly where it holds the day’s newspaper. “I’m probably just gonna go to bed anyway, unless you…?”

“No, that’s fine, sweetheart,” he says, and for some reason Zoe’s heart feels heavy. Larry hasn’t called her sweetheart for a long time, and something in the word makes her feel like a little kid again. “I’m sure you’re tired.”

She nods and grabs her phone off of the small coffee table, turning towards the stairs. The light is already off upstairs, she can tell. “Well, ‘night.”

A sound that’s suspiciously like a yawn, and then a “‘night” back. 

On the second step, her father’s voice stops her. “Zoe? We’re really glad you’re home.”

She ducks her head back down, forces a smile in his direction, and then continues to her room without looking up from her feet. 

* * *

Evan’s still working at Pottery Barn. 

He told himself, time and time again after senior year, that he’d be out of Pottery Barn in a year. Off to college full-time, maybe commuting or maybe even living on campus. But it’s six months past that year-long deadline, and here he is, on the first night of Hanukkah only just finishing the common app for next fall. Or trying to, rather, around his Pottery Barn shifts and his general fear of opening up to other people. 

On one of his shifts, he scrolls through Instagram during a quiet spell, having accepted the fact that his application would not be worked on during work hours long ago. Just his average feed, a few former high school classmates posting holiday pictures (Alana Beck, unsurprisingly, has color-coordinated with her dads, sister, and grandma effortlessly for Christmas photos) and some of those Central Park nature shoots the pretentious photographers he follows are always posting. He’s about to click onto his Explore page when a recommended account catches his eye. His heart sinks as he recognizes the profile picture and the name, simply titled “zo + ev” in place of full names. And there she is, Zoe Murphy, smiling so wide that some of her freckles disappear behind the others and her eyes are smaller than usual. Another girl sits just behind her, her lips angled so her face comes across as more “funny” than “happy,” but that’s on purpose, he thinks. Before he can convince himself not to, he clicks into their account, and it’s revealed that the other girl in the picture must be ‘Ev,’ or Eva, if her main account’s handle is trustworthy. His pulse slowing slightly, his eyes skim their profile. 

_ @stargirlzo_m and @evamillthegreat_ / NYU ‘23 / covers + general goofery / dm to req a song! _

From a glance, it appears that they’re roommates. Not that he’s like, actively trying to figure that out, no, it’s just that all of the videos seem to be filmed in the same place, and the previews of the comments have a couple messages like “that’s our fav down the hall neighbors!” and such. Evan’s not even surprised to see that they have a couple hundred followers, since when one of their videos begins to auto play, they definitely sound really good. Zoe’s playing guitar, and something in the familiar curve of her fingers on the strings almost makes him turn his phone off and shove it away to get rid of the deep swell of emotion he feels just seeing her like that. 

After...everything, he never really saw her play guitar again. While they were together, it was almost constant, because their coexistence was almost constant. But he couldn’t bring himself to go to the jazz band concerts for the rest of his senior year, and he certainly wasn’t hanging around her house while she figured out a new tune. Hearing her play is bittersweet and nostalgic and he feels...off. But he listens anyway. 

Her roommate has a really great voice, and it’s clear that in their few months of knowing each other they’ve played together a lot. He keeps scrolling. Eva, or Ev, has a few videos up of her singing a cappella, or with a background, some kind of...TikTok riff challenge, maybe? Zoe, too, has a few where she strums some jazzy numbers by herself, that familiar old smile on her face in a whole new light. But then he finds one of her alone in a denim jacket and a flower-patterned dress, and she opens her mouth and begins to sing, and Evan swears he could cry. She always claimed she couldn’t sing, but of course he disagreed. He still does, and as she softly sings Dodie Clark and her fingers pluck at the strings in some complicated pattern, he could never disagree more. He hurriedly keeps scrolling, since if he were to continue listening he’s not sure if he’d be able to make it through his shift without crying. 

She and her roommate are playing Crush by Tessa Violet, then, and it’s a little easier to hear. 

A customer comes into his line of sight and he quickly shoves the phone under the counter before he can hear Zoe come in to harmonize in the background. 

* * *

Sometime after Cynthia accepted the fact that Zoe wasn’t going to share every detail of her college life with her, she set her the task of going through her closet and cleaning up. She’d already done it before leaving in the fall, but Zoe agrees, mostly just to have something to do rather than thinking about the bedroom across from hers. She still hasn’t really breathed properly, but it’s a little easier when she’s alone. 

When her trash garbage bag is already partially filled with old tops from high school, old Harry Potter and Brie Larson posters, and some guitar sheet music she doesn’t remember buying, she catches sight of an old plastic storage bin. Her hand brushes the unmistakable feel of dusty plastic, and her fingers search for purchase so she can drag the container out. It’s heavier than it looks, and the most she can do is drag it out. She falls back onto her heels as she does, eventually crossing her legs criss-cross under her. She pushes her hair away from her face and lets her eyes roam over the container. It looks like it’s filled with paper, and as she opens the lid there’s an overwhelming scent of school glue and cheap acrylic paint. There are old star stickers coming off everywhere. 

“Oh, boy,” she mutters under her breath. 

She considers just chucking it into the trash for a moment, but thinks the better of it. Tentatively, she plunges one hand into the pile of papers and promptly sneezes. Fucking dust allergies. 

A few old math tests from elementary school are in the top pile, for some reason. She wastes no time in setting those into the garbage bag. She’ll sort the recycling out later, but for now she just wants to get the dust into one area. There’s an old, dried-up glue stick under the old tests and a couple of purple and blue markers with no caps. The faded yellow folder beneath them has clearly suffered for it, with big splotches of color on the thin paper. After tossing the markers in her normal trash, she picks the folder up. Immediately upon opening it, she’s hit by an image of herself as a little kid, her hand scribbling some crayon against printer paper with Connor at her side scribbling on the same paper. She lets out a sharp hiss of breath for nothing in particular. It turns out the folder is just full of old drawings, nothing special. Crayon stars on superhero capes, just about her and Connor’s combined interests. Seeing them on the same page feels like less of a gut punch after remembering them drawing together, but it still hurts all the same. 

She knows her mom would want to keep the drawings, but she dumps them into the garbage bag before she can think to do otherwise. 

The construction paper is surprisingly rough under her fingertips, but she smiles at the glue galaxies she’d created on the page, the letters of each star’s name written painstakingly next to them. She wonders where her good handwriting went and sets the page aside, figuring a little nostalgia won’t hurt. 

There are several pages that just seem to be covered in glitter and star stickers, which immediately find themselves in the unforgiving cell that is her garbage bag. Some old book reports reach the same fate, as does a small journal that seems to be dedicated entirely to her writing with her left hand. If some of the handwriting looks like Connor’s, she chooses to ignore it. 

_ “It’s weird,” Zoe says. “Who else writes with their left hand?” _

_ Connor sniffs, looking indignant as he holds his pencil aloft in his hand. It’s held so gently and delicately in his artist’s hand, all long and thin fingers. “I think it’s cool. Right hand writing isn’t special.” _

_ “And you smudge everything you write,” Zoe mutters under her breath. That didn’t stop her from trying to write like him, though. If he saw her, he ignored it.  _

It’s better to be rid of it, anyway. 

The next item appears to be crudely bound by some old thread. It’s several sheets of printer paper bound together, and with a sinking heart Zoe sees the same crayon stars and superhero capes on the page.  _ Monsieur Lumière.  _ One of Connor’s pretentious French phases as a child, probably, fueled by the old English-French dictionary he found in his room. 

She’d completely forgotten about the fake superhero they’d created, probably while huddled under one of their beds as their parents fought. A man to take away all their fear and sadness, who would bring the light of the stars wherever he was. Just a silly invention they’d dreamt up. A lot of good it did them. 

This hurts more, this creation of their shared crayons on one page. There were probably hours spent on this, and she can’t even bring herself to open it and read a page. 

She drops it suddenly as though the very touch of the paper to her fingers scalds her. She pushes it across the floor, away from her. She may leave it on some counter for her mother to find, rather than bringing herself to throw it away. She wants to get rid of it, but she can’t bring herself to pick it up again, not yet. 

It’s only as she picks up the next glitter-coated paper that she realizes it gave her a paper cut. 

* * *

“-right here—oh, isn’t this lovely?” Heidi says, her head turning back in Evan’s direction. She drops down onto the blanket she’s just finished spreading over the grass, crossing her legs under her. 

Evan smiles. “It is, yeah, definitely.”

And maybe he’s just a little surprised by how much he means it. Because this is the first year in a very long time, too long a time, where January 6th has felt like something other than a slightly sadder mirror of every other day. When he woke up today, he didn’t feel that same hollow dissatisfaction on this birthday. He felt...excited. 

It’s a nice feeling. Unusual, but nice. 

He’d probably be excited even if he hadn’t woken up like that, however. Heidi had insisted she take the day off, and she herself was so excited to be off and to be with him that he couldn’t help but pick up on it. His mother was always like that - if she was excited, he was excited. 

And she was definitely excited, given the honest-to-God picnic basket she’d packed for them and the new watch she’d given Evan just that morning “so he’d know when to look away from his inbox” (to which he’d feebly protested that it’s never too early to keep an eye out for forward movement, which she’d dismissed with a kiss on the cheek). As Evan carefully chooses a spot on the blanket where he is protected from the sun by the shade the tree branches above them throw, Heidi gets set unpacking everything, from small cans of sparkling water to grilled cheeses to bakery cookies to a bunch of grapes that looked like they’d had a fight with an anemic mouse and lost. Evan smiles as each item gets pulled out. 

Almost automatically, his eyes start scanning over the park. It feels like it’s been a while since he’s been here, too, or at least since he’s taken a moment to sit back and observe the park in its entirety. In the time it takes Heidi to finish setting up, he’s not sure he’s discovered the source of the uneasiness deep in his stomach. 

But Heidi is happy, and so he is, too. He turns back to her. 

“I picked up this cheese from Shaw’s, it’s supposedly super sharp which I know you love, so it should turn out better than the Kraft Singles grilled cheese last week.”

Evan represses a shudder. “Oh, good.”

Heidi lies back slightly, smiling at him. “Here.” She holds out a plate full of food she’d just pulled out. 

“Thanks,” Evan says, and when he smiles at her it's more genuine than most of the smiles he'd given her when he was younger. 

She reached over and pats his cheek. “I like seeing you happy, you know that?”

“Yeah, I think I got that from the whole motherly affection thing.”

Heidi shakes her head. “I’d tell you to lay off the sass, but this is the one day I can’t, huh?”

“Oh, you love it.”

“Yeah,” Heidi says, picking up an apple and taking a bite out of it. “Yeah, I do.” She leans over, and with her free hand, she ruffles Evan’s hair. 

“Hey!” He protests. “What was that for?” The action makes him feel like he’s a little kid again. 

Heidi smiles at him again. He can’t remember the last time she smiled this much. “My little boy is all grown up. Twenty. Can you believe it?”

He shakes his head, looking up toward the trees. He really can’t believe it. Three years ago, he’d never have believed it. Seventeen was a bad year. But here he is, sitting in Ellison Park three years later, where he’d felt so helpless before. He’d be lying if he said there wasn’t an edge of that now, but it’s nowhere close to the wide expanse it had once been. He’s made it to twenty, and he knows he’ll make it longer. He smiles back at her. “Not really,” he says.

They eat in silence for a moment. Normally the presence of other people in the park besides them would make him anxious, but not today. He’s just another person, enjoying the afternoon sun with his mother. He blends in with everyone else. He  _ feels  _ like them. He wants to cork it up along with the feeling of the sun on his cheeks and the grass below him. With a start, he realizes his ache a little from the constant pull upwards his lips are engaged in. He’s smiling so much his cheeks hurt. 

“I think you’re freckling again,” his mother mentions offhandedly. “I think you’re just about the only person who can’t freckle in the summer but can freckle just fine in January.”

“Maybe I am,” he says. “Like a superpower. Although it’s kind of a dumb superpower.”

“I don’t think so at all, sweetheart.” Heidi says. 

He shakes his head, and as his mind fills with the image of someone else’s freckled cheeks, he may be inclined to agree. 

* * *

“So you play a lot with Eva?”

Zoe looks up from her laptop, her brain unable to really understand the question. “What?”

Cynthia sits at the other end of the couch, and Zoe automatically tilts her screen in towards herself. “Aunt Christie mentioned it. She said that Sarah was talking about your...music Instagram at Christmas?”

Her cousin  _ had _ ended up cornering her about her instagram account between dinner and desert. She was actually kind of happy to talk about it, since she and Eva do get along better than most roommates and it’s pretty cool to play with other people. She couldn’t really care about their followers, but they certainly had them, that’s for certain. Besides, it was a welcome reprieve from the dreaded “do you have a boyfriend?” questions, since she couldn’t exactly say  _ no, i don’t have a boyfriend, since I’m still caught up on Evan, you know, the guy from junior year who lied about being friends with Connor and completely but accidentally fucked over the family in the public eye?  _ But they didn’t know the half of that story, and she didn’t like to admit to herself how much she still cared for Evan, so the significant other area was a no-go and anything else was boring. 

“Yeah, we have an account,” she says, shrugging. “It’s just a habit we’ve gotten into, playing together. It’s kind of fun to share it.”

“Ah,” Cynthia said, in that ‘I’m trying to understand but honestly have no idea what she’s talking about” tone of voice. “I’m glad, Zo’.”

Zoe smiles. 

“But are you sure that’s the...best thing?”

The corners of her lips turn down, and she can feel her voice hardening a little. She doesn’t want to be defensive, but she is. “What?”

“Well, after everything that happened with your brother...with the Connor Project.” When she realized that wasn’t a sentence, she continued. “Are you sure the public eye is the best thing?”

She bristles. “It’s hardly the public eye, it’s just an Instagram account, and my full name isn’t on it. And honestly, mom, it couldn't get worse. No one cares anymore. It’s been years. Most of that was taken down. And I can take care of myself.”

“I know, Zoe,” her mother said, and maybe she’s just being placating, but the hand she reaches over and lays on her arm really does lessen her defenses. “I know. But you can’t control those people, and I just want you to be happy and safe.”

“I know,” Zoe says. “I know you do.”

She’s sure they both remember the endless days of calls, coming in a time of confusion and new grief she doesn’t know if they’ve really moved past, yet. Zoe knows that, if she tries, she can probably remember the exact words they said, the exact tone they said them in. It was only worse when she believed them. 

Cynthia sits back again. They sit in silence for a little while. 

“I’d love to hear some, though,” she says, in that classic  _ mom _ voice. 

“Why don’t you ask Sarah for a link?” Zoe says, sure to make her voice sarcastic. 

“Why have a lousy link when I’ve got the rockstar right in front of me?”

Zoe rolls her eyes. “Sure, let me just summon my roommate. She’s not in Buffalo at all, she’s actually been tiny sized and in my suitcase this whole time, just waiting for my mother to ask about my music so she can belt her tiny heart out.”

“Ha, ha,” Cynthia says. “Good thing you can sing, missy. I know this is where you’re going with all of your university sarcasm.”

“I can’t, mom.”

“Don’t give me that.”

“What would you prefer I give you?”

“An accurate assessment of your talents.”

“Sure, I know I’ve got one in my coat pocket somewhere, right with my sky-high self esteem and my 4.0 GPA.”

“Your GPA is more than fine and if you keep talking like that I’m going to worry. Why don’t you go pick it up from your room along with your guitar? Then I can hear the famous musician’s liquid silver voice while she plucks away with the speed of a god at her strings.”

Zoe cringes. “Always so poetic.”

“It’s a gift,” Cynthia says airily, and the two smile at each other. “Go on. I’ll get your father.”

“I'm not a child at a recital.”

“Why couldn’t you be? We just want to hear you play, sweetheart. We barely see you now, and next time it’ll be Carnegie Hall.”

Somehow, Zoe ends up retrieving her guitar. True to her mother’s word, Larry was there when she came back downstairs. She’d never expected to actually play for them, but this is the first time Cynthia has really pushed her on something in a long time. It’s nice, quite honestly, that she feels that strongly about hearing her play guitar. 

“I really normally don’t sing,” she protests mildly. 

“Nonsense,” Larry says, and Zoe smiles. She shifts the guitar in her lap. 

“Eva absolutely loves singing this,” she begins, her fingers seeking out the beginning chords to Crush, because quite honestly she can’t think of anything else to play. Her parents’ eyes on her make her feel nervous. “She’s made me play it a million times. She’d probably be mad if she knew I was singing it without her.”

It’s...nice to play for them. They smile and clap as she plays song after song for them. She can  _ feel  _ their happiness at something she’s accomplished, for the first time in her life. But for the first time since she’s been home, she thinks she can feel the weight of a third gaze on her. She knows it’s just in her mind, but all the same, she hoped she’d left that lurking guilt from Connor far away, in the orchard, at the end of senior year. She doesn’t know how she feels now that it’s back.

He always used to listen to her play. Maybe this is what she gets instead of him, now.

* * *

“Zoe?” Evan says. 

She looks...small, is the first word that crosses his mind. Which is funny, because although Zoe Murphy isn’t the tallest person you’ll ever meet, she’s certainly got the confidence and gravitas to make up for it.  _ Stage presence _ , as his mother would say. 

Maybe he’s caught her between the first and second act, then. 

She looks up at him, her hands practically drowning in her chunky-knit yellow sweater. It comes up to her chin, half-tucked into a denim skirt at her waist, and where the skirt ends a pair of high riding boots begin. Some part of his brain recognizes that she looks impeccable just as she always does, even when the look on her face is so unguarded and shaken that he’s half surprised she’s still standing. Something passes over her face, and in a second it rearranges into something a little happier than before. It’s not happy or okay, not by a long shot, but if he didn’t know her better he may think it was. Barely giving himself a moment to marvel at just how cool it is she does that, concern overrides every alarm bell going off in his brain about being around her and talking to her and hurting her again  _ (not again, not again) _ , because the most important thing is making sure she’s okay, the most important thing is her comfort. “What-” he breaks off, shakes his head. What does he want to say?  _ What are you doing? What are you feeling? What do you need? _

What could he possibly say?

(He knows it doesn’t matter what he wants, in the end. It doesn’t matter.)

“What’s...up?” he finishes a second later, cringing internally. 

Zoe’s mouth twists and her nose scrunches, and for a second he thinks she’s going to cry, but a moment later she settles on a half smile, and she looks so much like Connor did that day in the computer lab that he feels winded, winded by an image he couldn’t have conjured consciously. At once the weight of where he is hits him squarely in the chest, and Zoe must sense it, because when she speaks it’s gentle, almost, even though every fiber of her being feels like it’s been shifted on its axis. “Well, uh. You know. Not a lot. And a lot, also, I guess.”

Evan nods, and for a second he feels seventeen again, fighting against a torrent of words, because Zoe never talked like that. She always selected every word carefully, and if she can’t, there’s no hope for Evan. “Yeah, no I, I definitely get it. That makes, that makes sense. You’re um, I guess you’re home for break? Winter break?”

Zoe nods once, and for once he detects a hint of ice in the gesture. “Yeah. And you’re…”

“Still home,” he supplements quickly. “I’m, uh, applying, actually, but, you know…”

“Yeah,” she says, and Evan privately thinks that this may be the most painful conversation they’ve had. There’s still a look in Zoe’s eyes, something a little unhinged and a lot hurt, and he wants more than anything to get rid of it. He knows that it’s not his job, but God, he wants to. He wants to grab her hand and press a kiss to her temple just like he used to, to slide his hand along the side of her jaw like he did whenever she was upset. He wants to remind her to breathe just like she used to remind him to do, wants to trace the freckles on her cheeks until she’s giggling and her eyes are dry. 

“Are you here to see Connor?” she spits out, as though surprising herself, and Evan finds himself nodding, because oh yeah, they’re at a cemetery. He absolutely could not tell you why he chose to go down to the cemetery, rather than literally any other place. He just...felt like he had to. For some reason, he felt like he needed to go to Connor’s grave to say sorry and maybe thank you for something he couldn’t quite understand. He hadn’t planned on running into Zoe, though. 

“You are too? I can...I can go,” he offers, and he’s surprised at how quickly Zoe shakes her head. 

“No, I’d...I’d like someone else there.”

“Really?” he says, his voice soft. 

“Yeah,” she says, offering him a quick ghost of a smile before steeling herself and turning. 

He follows her in silence, choosing to focus on the sound of her shoes on the concrete and examining the back of her head and the trees lining the rows of graves and new clouds that have crossed the sun. They must reach Connor’s plot eventually, as Zoe turns sharply and leads him through the maze of stones until they stand in front of one that is simpler than its neighbors. Classic, he supposes, although he doesn’t know if that’s actually a thing, a ‘classic’ grave.  _ Connor Murphy  _ is cut into the stone, followed by a birth and death date and a short epitaph of  _ beloved son, brother, and friend.  _ He squashes down an unkind thought before it can really grow at all. 

Zoe’s sat down on the grass, denim skirt and all. After hesitating, he follows. 

“Would you like me to-”

“No,” Zoe says, but her eyes are focused on the grave, and Evan has the feeling she’s a million worlds away from him and it wouldn’t matter what he said. “You’re fine.”

So he sits quietly, and tries to think of something he’d like to say to Connor in the peace of his own head. What would he say, if given the chance? He doesn’t know if it would be worth anything. For him, he grew to learn that he was not who he thought he was on his worst days, no matter how many there were. But he doesn’t know if that’s worth saying to Connor. It wasn’t even really Connor who taught him that, in the end. He forced that message into his own brain, with the help of Dr. Sherman and his mother and even Zoe and the Murphy’s, in some roundabout way. He’s learned he can keep going. 

Maybe Zoe still needs to learn that, he thinks, with a glance in her direction. She seems to be deteriorating, her hand absently twisting grass at her side, her face falling just a little more. She’s biting her lip and her brow is furrowing deeper. Or maybe this is just one of her bad days. 

She stands up and sways on her feet. Evan clambers up after her, a hand reaching out to steady her almost unconsciously. “I’m sorry,” she says, and it’s only then that he notices the near-silent sobs coming from her, although there are not yet any tears. She just looks...sad. He hasn’t seen her look that sad in a while. Her non-grassy hand reaches up to her face. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Hey,” Evan says, and he aches to reach out and touch her, to comfort her in some way, but he holds himself back. He attempts a joke. “You apologize too much.”

He sees tears on her cheeks, and one indents where he’s sure she’s biting the inside of her mouth. 

“Please,” he says, and it’s only then that she seems further away than she was before. “Do you need a ride somewhere?”

She’s in no state to refuse, but she looks like she might anyway. He cuts her off with another ”please, let me do this” and she relents. She looks ready to collapse at any moment, and he’s terrified she will, so he keeps one hand hovering nervously hovering between her shoulder and back their whole walk as though he’s swatting invisible bugs away. He considers opening the door for her, but thinks the better of it and leaves her to fend for herself in that particular field. They’re silent as he gets into the car and shifts the key in the ignition, pulling out of the cemetery parking lot. They stay silent for a few minutes on the road as well, while Evan drives in the vague direction of her house. 

“You’re driving,” Zoe says suddenly, and through the thickness of tears Evan thinks he can detect a hint of pride. 

“Yeah, that I am,” he replies, shaking his head slightly. 

He thinks Zoe may say something like “wow” under her breath, but a moment later she’s sniffling again and that’s all he can think about. “I have some tissues in the glove compartment.”

“Thanks,” she says softly, almost getting drowned out in the sound of tires on pavement, and the sound of her soft consonants breaks his heart. “I’m sorry,” she tries again, but Evan stops her. 

“Don’t, Zoe. Don’t ever apologize. Really.” His hands tighten on the steering wheel. “Believe me. You have nothing to apologize for.”

There’s another silence. It seems like Zoe has stopped crying, although she still seems unsteady, albeit less all over the place than when he first saw her. 

“I swear I’m doing better than this,” she says. “I really am. I don’t, I really don’t know why that happened. I wish I could explain to you why. Why it’s still happening now, honestly. I’m doing better. I am.”

“You don’t owe me any explanations, Zoe.”

“I know. I mean, I don’t, but. I want to give you one, anyway.”

He nods. “Where to?” He finally says, the words stiffer than he wanted them to be. 

Her voice is small, almost fragile. “Could you...maybe go to the orchard?”

He nods again, feeling a bit like a bobble head. “Yeah, of course.” He doesn’t add the  _ anything, anything at all for you _ , but he thinks she might hear it anyway. 

* * *

Sitting in the orchard with Evan again, it’s almost...surreal. 

Zoe hasn’t been back since she met him a week before graduation. Being in the orchard brings all kinds of feelings of melancholy for her, a tangle of guilt and longing and maybe a little bit of hope, too. 

Because when she looks across from her, Evan is there, and her own emotions are reflected on his face. They’re both sitting in the grass under one of the trees. They’re no longer saplings, which in itself is weird. The year has brought a lot of growth for them. Looking at Evan, she can’t help but think that they’re not the only ones. 

He’s so much more... _ something _ than he was before. Is it happy? Confident? Whatever it is, it fills him from the inside. Even in the orchard, where his brow is furrowed and his eyes are focused on some faraway point in the distance, he’s sitting taller and fidgeting less than before. He’s doing better. 

And she meant what she said to him, how she’s doing better too. Getting out and away to the city had really done wonders for her, finally being away from all of the shit that happened in high school. 

She pushes her foot out, nudging against his thigh. He angles his head to her, and suddenly she gets the same urge to cry again. Her vertigo has lessened significantly since arriving at the orchard and stumbling to sit, but she still feels unsteady even while sitting. The corner of his lip perks up a bit as his eyes meet hers. 

“It’s been almost a year,” she says. 

“I know.”

There’s a pause; she lets herself listen to the rustle of the no-longer-saplings. 

“Do you ever wish you could go back?” she says, surprising herself. 

He takes a moment to respond. “To when?”

“I don’t know,” she admits. Her eyes burn and she’s not quite sure why. “Last time we were here? Last year? The very first time we really talked? This morning?”

Evan shakes his head. “That’s, that’s a lot of times.”

“I know.”

“Maybe I’d go back to this morning,” he said. “So I could...prepare myself for this. So I’d be ready to see you.”

She snorts. “I’d like preparation to deal with me, too.”

“That’s not what I meant, Zoe.”

“Oh?” She doesn’t know where this challenge has come from in her tone. “What did you mean?”

“I meant—I meant that it’s...different seeing you now. Because of...everything. And I don’t want to hurt you more.”

At once, all the fight leaves her. She passes a hand over her face. “God, Evan. I don’t think that’s possible.”

If she had meant to hurt him-and she honestly doesn’t know herself if she did-she certainly succeeded. Evan seems to curl in on himself a bit. 

“That’s not what I meant,” she adds belatedly. “I just-you make things difficult, you know? Because this entire—” and here she gestures emphatically to the orchard, “ _ thing _ is so fucked, and I want to leave it all behind, since it makes me  _ feel _ fucked. But then I see you, and it’s like…” she lets out a puff of air. “It’s like I’m back to being sixteen again. Which is terrible on so many levels but is really, really great on one.”

He doesn’t say anything. 

Her hand picks at the hem of her skirt. “I had you, Evan. And that made everything else okay.” She blinks rapidly against her blurring vision. “And as much as I want to leave everything else behind, I don’t-I can’t leave you. And that.”

“I understand,” Evan says softly. 

She doesn’t say the other part that keeps her from leaving, the total guilt that fills her mind every once in a while when she thinks about Connor. She had a feeling he may already know that part. 

“And the stars are here, too. I can’t leave them.”

She can hear the smile in Evan’s voice. “No, I bet you can’t.”

She shakes her head, tears slipping from her eyes. As he leans over and swipes them away with his thumb, she represses a choking sob from somewhere deep inside her chest. “I couldn’t either,” he says, his smile morphing into something sadder and smaller. His fingertips brush against her cheeks one last time, and belatedly she remembers those nights spread out on the grass where he traced the stars from the sky on her freckles. His fingers feel just like they did then, almost reverent against her cheek, his feather-light touch sending shivers from where it lands. Her eyes close, and without the hard ground beneath her and the sunlight that’s bright on her eyelids, she can almost pretend no time has passed at all, that she can have  _ this _ entirely and wholly and painlessly. But Evan’s hand, and then his whole being, moves away from her, and she is left with only the phantom of his touch and the quiet noise of the leaves behind her. She lets her eyes drift open again, once the tears have receded slightly.

Evan stands, maybe sensing that she needs to get away or maybe just wanting out himself. “C’mon,” he says, holding a hand out to her. “I’ll drive you home.”

She smiles, albeit a watery smile, and takes his hand, ignoring just how familiar and easy it feels to slip her hand into his. His palm is warm, and he hoists her up with only a little difficulty. She smiles as she rights herself, and he steps back quickly once he’s sure she won’t fall. The faint blush that steals across his cheeks only makes her vertigo worse, but she manages to walk anyways, the blurriness fading from her eyes. 

Just before they get in the car, Zoe reaches out a grabs his sleeve, the fabric of it rough under her calloused fingertips. Time slows down for the barest second, and her world narrowed to the faint, warm brown of his eyes. But the moment passes, and she tugs him in closer to her, wrapping her other arm around his shoulder. She means to say _ thank you, _ but the words never pass her lips. Instead she pushes herself up until her mouth is right next to his ear. Zoe breathes, “Watch the stars for me, Evan. Please.”

She feels him nod against her shoulder, and finally his grip around her lower back feels like more than just dead weight. “I will, Zo.”

In a moment, she’ll reach for the car door and step away from him. In a moment he’ll do the same, and they’ll sit in an almost-comfortable silence for the ride home. In a while they will be at her house, and they will say goodbye, and Zoe will go back to NYU the next day and Evan will go to his shift at Pottery Barn. In a moment, this may be the last time they just exist like this with each other, or it may not be. 

Either way, she holds him close in this moment and savors the feeling of his heart beating in tandem with hers. 


End file.
